Expressive Culture: Bruno Taut

Expressive Culture: Bruno Taut
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Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut was one of the iconic German artists who significantly promoted the expressionist movement that supported modern housing. Today, his vast housing projects continue to contribute to cooperative buildings in Berlin, whereby neighborhoods such as Treptow and Kreuzberg provide examples of his innovative urban initiatives (Kim et al., 2013). He was born in 1880 in Konigsberg, Germany. His famous building was the prismatic Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition in 1914 (Miller et al., 2017). Taut is classified as an expressionist and a modernist based on his sketches for Alpine Architecture in 1917, which are the works of an unabashed Utopian visionary. Before completing his art and construction studies, Taut was employed by Bruno Mohring in Berlin and later worked in Stuttgart with Theodor Fisher.
While in Berlin, he attained artistic skills in jugendstil and learned new building methods of incorporating steel in house construction. In Stuttgart, he received his first commission to renovate a village church in Unterriexingen by incorporating his architectural skills in urban planning. In 1927, Taut was one of the acknowledged architects who contributed to the Weinnenhof Estate exhibition. His work is associated with an artistic movement known as the Garden City Movement that emphasized genuine utopian idealism led by Sir Ebenezer Howard (Bletter et al., 1973). The concept of the movement was to find a balance between urban and rural landscapes. The movement inspired Taut because of the possibility of venturing into his utopian theories.
After completing his art and construction studies and working under numerous architects, he began developing structures based on his artistic theories. In this regard, he constructed the glass pavilion and manipulated glass into a practical building material (Miller et al., 2017). Following the construction, he gained a reputation for promoting a contemporary vision by renovating styles that reflect modernism. He later published Alpine Architektur, a collection of drawings with 30 plates illustrating a city in the Alps (Taut, 1972). The designs presented ...